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BBC performance

Start: 29 March 2017

Status:
Closed

End: 17 July 2017

Under the new Royal Charter and Agreement, regulation of the BBC passes from the BBC Trust to Ofcom on 3 April 2017. One of Ofcom’s central responsibilities is to hold the BBC to account for fulfilling its mission and promoting its public purposes.

As part of our new responsibilities, we are required to publish an operating framework containing provisions to secure effective regulation of the BBC. In relation to the BBC’s performance, we must set an operating licence for the BBC, and we may set measures to assess the BBC’s performance. The licence must set out the enforceable regulatory conditions that we consider appropriate to ensure the BBC fulfils its duties.

This consultation seeks views on our proposals for:

the BBC operating licence, and the process for amending this in future; and

Ofcom’s performance measures, and the process for amending these in future.

Alongside responses to this consultation, we will also consider the BBC’s interim annual plan, which it is required to publish by 3 July 2017. We intend to publish a statement setting out our decisions, including the final operating licence, by the end of September 2017.

Update 20 July 2017

On 17 July 2017, Ofcom published the quantitative findings of its deliberative research into audiences’ relationship to the BBC and their perceptions of its distinctiveness. Together with the qualitative findings PDF, 954.5 KB (published earlier in June), this research will inform Ofcom’s ongoing work assessing the BBC’s performance.

Ofcom’s consultation on the draft BBC operating licence closed on 17 July, but we recognise that some stakeholders may want to take account of the new research before finalising their responses. In these cases, we will extend the submission date until 24 July. Stakeholders who have already responded, will also have until 24 July to amend their submissions.